There is a lot of money to be made in the mobile financemarket, but only if you understand the consumers.

The Mobile Intel Series: Finance, a recentsurvey of more than 300 million global mobile users by MillennialMedia and comScore, revealed that finance was one of the biggestglobal vertical industries in 2011, growing more than 300 percentfrom the previous year (second only to technology, which grewnearly 700 percent).

Of this growing finance category, there were severalsub-categories. The largest was insurance with 42 percent of thetotal, followed by banking, financial services and creditcards.

Mobile banking was the finance sub-category accessed mostfrequently by consumers. About 35 percent accessed banking contentonce per week and 22 percent accessed it almost every day.

Other notable findings by the report include:

• Around 80 percent of mobile finance users own a Smartphone—anincrease of 55 percent year-over-year. Additionally, 37 percent ofmobile finance users own a non-phone connected device (tablet,e-reader, MP3 player, etc.).
• Mobile finance users generally fall between ages 18 to 34. Thenumber of users in that age range almost doubles the overall mobileaverage. Users also over-index in the 75k+ and 100k+ incomebrackets.
• Overall, mobile finance users are 55 percent male and 45percent female.
• Almost half of mobile finance users identify themselves as risktakers, compared to 35 percent of the total mobile audience.
• About 50 percent of mobile finance users claim they will stickwith a brand they like. But they also are 95 percent more likely tobe influenced by a celebrity endorsement than the overall mobileaudience.
• Beyond finance content, mobile finance users most frequentlyspend time on apps and sites focused on weather (84 percent), maps(74 percent), general news (67 percent), sports information (58percent), entertainment news (58 percent) and technology news (42percent).

Consumers interact with their mobile devices in new ways,according to survey results. While mobile browsers are the dominantway users access mobile finance information, apps are the secondmost common. These customers' relationships with mobile content areconstantly changing. If finance brands want to grow, they need tocommit to the world of mobile advertising.